A NEW ‘DAY ZERO’: DEEPINDER GOYAL
Company won’t alter focus for short-term profits, says co-founder in blog post
“Today is a big day for us. A new Day Zero. But we couldn’t have gotten here without the incredible efforts of India’s entire internet ecosystem,” said Zomato Cofounder Deepinder Goyal ahead of the company’s listing on Friday.
In a blog post, titled Letter from Deepi, he praised his colleagues and investors, and said that Zomato would not alter its focus to short-term profits at the cost of long-term success.
“India is a tough market to operate in, but if you are building to succeed in India, you are already exceptional. I say that because I believe Zomato and Swiggy are two of the best food delivery apps in the world today. We have a long way to go before we can call ourselves world class by our customers’ standards, but we are determined to get there,” Goyal said.
Food delivery in India is largely a duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy.
Zomato had made a foray into international markets earlier, but is now focusing on the home market. Co-founder Gaurav Gupta had told Business Standard earlier that the firm is very focused on India, and the initial public offering (IPO) will not change how it operates as a business.
In a note in May, Anand Rathi Research said that in 2019, food consumption in India was worth about $670 billion, mostly driven by home-cooked food.
Food Services, defined as nonhome-cooked food or restaurant food, contributes only around
10 per cent of the food consumption market. This is substantially lower than in countries like the US and China, where food services contribute about 54 per cent and about 58 per cent of total food consumption, respectively. Hence, the scope for growth is huge.
In his post, Goyal emphasised that it takes time to build a good product. “The tremendous response to our IPO gives us the confidence that the world is full of investors who appreciate the magnitude of investments we are making, and take a long term view of our business,” he said.
He added that there were many large companies that are building the India of the future.
“Jio’s prolific growth has set all of us up for unprecedented scale. Flipkart, Amazon, Ola, Uber, Paytm — have also over the years, collectively laid the railroads that are enabling companies like ours to build the India of the future. We stand proudly and humbly on the shoulders of giants, and we thank everyone for giving us, and so many other start-ups, the opportunity to look ahead into the future,” Goyal said.
The company shared a video of the listing event at their Gurugram office. “Everything that we’ve achieved till now, and everything that we’ll achieve from hereon, we owe it all to you — our customers, delivery partners, and restaurant partners. Today, on the day of our listing, we wish we could’ve brought everyone under a single roof. Since that’s not possible, we decided to bring a few of our customers, delivery partners and restaurant partners to our ‘ringing the bell’ ceremony. We thank everyone for your continuous love. Onwards and upwards!” Zomato said in a statement.
“THE TREMENDOUS RESPONSE TO OUR IPO GIVES US THE CONFIDENCE THAT THE WORLD IS FULL OF INVESTORS WHO APPRECIATE THE MAGNITUDE OF INVESTMENTS WE ARE MAKING”